Pain and Paradox: A Diffractive Analysis of Refusal and Resistance in Urban Education

• In Event: Book Talk: Walking Away: Refusing and Resisting Reactionary Curriculum Movements

Abstract

Objectives:
The objective of the text is to interrogate the concept of "walking away" from curricular violence through a diffractive analysis. Through this analytic methodology, we juxtapose posthuman analysis with teacher narratives and affective media like rap music and interviews. This diffraction aims to explore how walking away is not just a simple departure but a complex interaction that shapes relationships and identities and seeks to offer new insights into the dynamics of resistance and agency in teacher practice.

Theoretical framework:
As a result of employing diffraction as methodology, this text thinks with and alongside a variety of frameworks. Those include agential realism (Barad, 2007; 2014; Barad & Gandorfer, 2021), Black studies and music theory (Davis, 2011; Jones, 1963, Keyes, 2002; Mitchell, 2018), Indigenous philosophies of agency (Marker, 2018; Tuck & McKenzie, 2015; Watts, 2013), forms of posthumanism (Author, In press; Author, In press; Wozolek, 2021).

Modes of inquiry:
This paper enacts a diffraction which enables the authors to explore how a juxtaposition of narratives, quotations, rap lyrics, and academic analysis produces something new in its intra-action (Barad, 2007). This methodological choice co-produces a different understanding of the complexities involved in acts of resistance if curricular violence.

Data sources:
This text draws on diverse sources, including scholarly texts, rap lyrics, and personal narratives. The personal narratives come from the experiences of one author’s time as an elementary school teacher in a urban center in the midwestern U.S. The rap lyrics come from the second authors’ body of music inspired by his own experiences growing up in that urban center and becoming a teacher there. These sources, when placed alongside one another like light waves, produce a new diffractive pattern of pain, freedom, resilience, and understanding.

Results:
Through its diffraction-based analysis, this paper problematizes the belief that "walking away" is merely the rejection of a thing by moving away from it. Rather, walking away requires an understanding of what is being left (an understanding that is done provocatively, effectively, and eloquently in the lyrics of rap songs), the possible ways forward (demonstrated in the stories of a teacher in the field), and the courage to move forward when the path is not clear (courage that we think emerges in the juxtaposition).

Scholarly significance:
We stand at a moment where the confines of policy and politics are constricting the paths forward for educators and their supporters around the country. States like Florida and Texas (not to mention Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, and others) enact new laws, adopt new curricular materials, and make new funding decisions that push back against any and all progress made over the course of the last half century. These acts of educational autocracy leave classroom teachers to ask, “what can we do, and how can we do it?” This paper offers a way of thinking about refusal that might present those teachers with the way forward (away) that empowers them to act for their own sake and, equally importantly, for the sake of their students.

Author

• Alexander B. Pratt, University of Memphis